While visiting family members recently, we all went out for ice cream, and got to discussing our favourite brands and flavours and such. My aunt mentioned that she prefers Ben & Jerry’s, in large part because they use growth-hormone-free milk and cream for their products, and bovine growth hormone can cause health problems. I was under the impression that there hadn’t been any definitive links established between BGH and human health, so I asked her exactly what these problems were; she replied that she had heard of studies that linked BGH to early puberty in girls. (I think; I wasn’t entirely clear on what she was saying.)
In the interests of familial harmony, I didn’t pursue this line of conversation further. This particular aunt is rather environmentally conscious, perhaps overly so; so it’s possible that she read some alarmist article somewhere and misremembered the details. Still, I’m curious: is there some link that has been either established or postulated between the use of BGH in dairy cows and abnormal human development? And more broadly, have any adverse health effects been linked to the use of hormones in dairy cattle?
